Hurt
An ATLA oneshot
By
EvilFuzzy9
Sokka knew he would kill himself one of these days. If he kept this up, all he would get would be an early grave. He knew all too well that at the rate he was going, this would be the death of him.
He knew. He knew. He just didn't care.
Sokka wasn't sure how exactly it began. Perhaps it was the wine at the post-war celebration. Perhaps it was the sake he drank at Zuko's coronation. Perhaps it was even the elixir he had taken to swilling to numb the pain in his leg, the pain that refused to go away even months after the bones had completely healed.
He could not say for sure. He did not remember.
Everything after the war was kind of a blur for Sokka. The pressure had been overwhelming, the pressure that came with people seeing him as a war hero. He had felt so inadequate, so powerless, next to his sister and their other friends. They all seemed to have something they were truly good at, a clear role in the job of restoring peace.
Compared to them, he didn't see what he could possibly do. When it had just been them flying around the world and fighting the Fire Nation, he had felt so sure, so certain of his purpose, his duty. He was a warrior, a leader - it was his job to protect his friends and guide them - Hell, even to make them laugh.
Except they no longer needed his protection, his guidance, his jokes. They were doing fine without his help. Better than fine, in fact. They all had things they knew they needed to do, and they all grit their teeth and did those things. They all had a goal, a dream, a grand vision for the future that they could aim for and work towards.
But not Sokka. He had no dream, no goal - for a time he had centered his life, his plans for the future, on Suki. But then their relationship had gone up in smoke, and he'd been left holding the pieces of his broken heart.
He felt like it had broken more times than could ever be fixed.
Honestly, though, Suki leaving him had probably just been the tipping point. Even before that Sokka had already been struggling with his feelings of inadequacy, but after it he just gave up. While everyone around him grew up and pursued their dreams, Sokka drifted through life directionless. He felt like he had been left behind, like he didn't even matter any more.
After a while he began to wonder if he really had ever truly mattered.
He was broken, honestly. Before even reaching the age of twenty, he was bitter and homeless and broken and wretched, a mere shell of the man he once was.
After Suki left him, Sokka could not bring himself to face his friends or his family, so he had left - on a journey of "introspection and self-discovery and all that spiritual mumbo jumbo," as he had put it in the letter he'd left for them. But the only thing Sokka found on his journey was the bottom of the bottle, and the bitter taste of regret.
And for three years he wandered the Earth Kingdom in a melancholic daze, a pitiful vagabond and drunkard who had to beg for spare coins just to support his habit.
Sokka looked nothing like the strong young warrior he had once been. He ate little these days, aside from what he could steal or scavenge, and he had lost a good deal of weight over the past few years. He had all but abandoned grooming himself: his hair hang long and lank down the sides of his face, and his features were all but hidden behind the beard of an unkempt vagrant. Once bright blue eyes were now dull and glazed, bloodshot with deep bags beneath them.
Sokka these days looked gaunt and haggard, filthy and unkempt. He had the gaze of a man who had seen too much and just finally stopped caring. His gangly, lanky frame made him look dreadful, dressed in those tattered, stained rags that might have once been Water Tribe clothes. He looked nothing like Sokka should.
But then, he was hardly Sokka at all. A once cunning wit had been dulled by years of drinking and drinking, and he never laughed any more. When people saw him, they did not see the resourceful young war hero or the son of the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe. They saw only a wretched vagabond, the refuse of society cast aside and trod upon by an uncaring world. He was scarcely worth the first glance, let alone a second.
And yet, for some reason or another, when the wife of the Avatar came to that rundown, dilapidated ghost of a town looking for a place to stay the night, she saw that man, that pitiful wretch of a man, and the entire world seemed to come to a stop as recognition filled her eyes and a shrill cry tore itself from her throat.
"SOKKA!"
The man did not respond to the name, at first. Whiskey had dulled his mind, and further more he had not been called that name in years. He had almost forgotten he'd ever had a name.
Yet after a few moments, and a repeated cry of the name - louder this time - Sokka slowly shook his head and trained a glassy, slightly unfocused gaze on the woman addressing him. She was beautiful, with an air of authority and grace, and she was dressed in simple yet elegant finery after the manner of the Water Tribe. He could not imagine how someone so obviously important could possibly know his name, let alone care enough to deign to speak to him.
And yet she was.
He stared at her curiously, his vision swimming as he tried to focus on her face. He felt a strange niggling at the back of his mind that seemed to tell him that he knew this woman from somewhere, but how could he possibly?
"Who are you?" he asked her. His voice was raspy and hoarse from disuse, and the words fell clumsily from his tongue, slurred and jumbled in his drunken haze.
The woman's eyes widened, and he could see tears welling up in the corners of her bright blue eyes. She stared at him with a look of something like horror on her face, and she fell to her knees. A soft, nearly silent sob slipped from her lips, and her shoulders began to heave and her lips began to quiver as she stared at him, tears flowing freely from her eyes.
"Sokka..." she whispered, sounding almost afraid to speak the name a second time, as though she feared using it would cause something to break. "Oh... Oh, Sokka..."
She moaned miserably, before breaking down into outright weeping as she threw her arms around him and pulled his thin frame into a tight embrace. She squeezed his body tightly against her own, as though afraid to let him go, afraid he would vanish into thin air if she did not clutch him to her bosom.
"Sokka..." she said his name again with a sob, pressing her face into his shoulder. Her tears soaked into the cloth of his ragged, filthy shirt. "Sokka, don't you recognize me?" she asked him, sobbing into his shoulder. "It's me, Sokka... It's me, your sister... Katara."
He stiffened up at those words, and his weary eyes widened briefly, recognition flashing in them as he stared down at the woman embracing him. Tears pricked at his eyes as, unbidden, memories of happier days came rushing back in a flood of emotion. His gut wrenched and twisted, and his throat felt suddenly dry and rough. He was having trouble breathing as he fought down the confused, conflicting urges to sob and scream and laugh and whisper.
Every individual breath felt like an unbearable ordeal. His body was wracked with silent sobs even as he felt hot, indignant anger suddenly surge up in his stomach. He tasted bile as he looked down at his sister, thinking about how beautiful and grand she looked even in such a miserable state, and bitter envy and resentment churned his gut.
Angrily, he shoved her off of her, and he snapped, "Go away! I don't need your pity!"
He tried to stand, tried to get up and leave and turn his back on her, but his legs refused to support his body. He cursed as he fell back down, despising his traitorous body as he once more felt his sister's pitying gaze.
It galled him.
"Damn you..." he hissed, "Leave me alone... I don't... You don't need me... I hate you!" he growled, glaring weakly at his sister. But she continued looking at him with those sad eyes, and he could not bring himself to meet her gaze.
He grit his teeth, bracing his arms against the wall as he tried to once more pick himself up. But his knees buckled instantly, and he fell back down with a curse.
"Dammit," he weakly spat, trying to will away the tears that welled up in his eyes. He did not look at his sister. He did not want her to see him like this, so weak and wretched and helpless.
"I hate you..." he hissed through his teeth, shoulders heaving. "Why won't you leave? I don't want your help. I... I don't n-need you. I h-h-hate you..."
A sob tore out of his throat, and he angrily clapped his hands to his eyes, not wanting her to see the tears that poured down his cheeks. His clothes hung limply off his gaunt, skeletal frame, once dark skin now a sickly pale.
"I hate you..." he whispered in between gasping breaths, his shoulders heaving and his body double over, as though in pain. "Why do you do this to me? Why do you have to be so strong and important and unique? What makes you so special...? What makes you think I need your help...? I'm not weak!" he spat miserably. "I don't need you... I'm not weak..."
He averted his gaze from hers, eyes downcast as his shoulders heaved and his throat constricted.
"So stop looking at me like that...! I don't need your pity! I don't want your help! I just... I just don't... Just leave me alone! Leave me alone!" he wailed pathetically. "Stop looking at me!"
And like a dam had been burst, years of emotion and frustration poured out of him. It was a torrent that could not be stopped. He sobbed and screamed and cursed his sister and his fate. He did not stop. Even when her arms wrapped around him once more and lifted him up, letting him lean his weight on her, he did not stop. He could not stop.
"I don't need you..." he whimpered. "Why can't you just leave me to die...? I want to die!" he cried even as she led him away, half-carrying him down the dark, empty streets. "It's not like anybody would care if I was gone..." he continued in a hoarse whisper. "You don't need me. Nobody does. I'm just... useless. Worthless. Trash."
"No," Katara whispered softly, sadly. It was the first thing she had said since Sokka had started sobbing and ranting, and her voice was hoarse and cracked as she spoke. "I would care. We all would. We all do."
She sniffled, squeezing her arms around her brother's shoulder to reassure herself that he was still there. Since when had he been so light?
"No you don't!" Sokka retorted angrily, drunkenly. Katara could smell the liquor on his breath. "None of you do! None of you need me. You all have your own lives, your own special things. Why would any of you need a piece of garbage like me?"
"You are not garbage," Katara told him, and even though her voice was weak from sobbing, Sokka could feel such conviction behind her words that for a moment almost he believed them.
But the he scoffed, a dark look on his face.
"Yes I am," he insisted. "I can't do anything. I'm not needed anywhere. I'm just... I'm nobody. Nobody needs me. Who would want someone like me?" he rasped. "I'm trash. Human offal."
"Stop talking about yourself like that...!" Katara cried, embracing him even tighter yet. "What makes you think that? Why can't you see how badly we've missed you?!" she shouted, and there was anger as well as sorrow in her words. "Why did you leave?! Why did you abandon us?! Why? WHY?!"
Sokka flinched at the volume of her words, looking like a dog that had been physically struck. Were he capable at that time of standing under his own power, he likely would have bolted into the night, so unwilling was he to face his sister. But he could not. He simply stood there, leaning against Katara as they walked down the street.
Katara broke down into sobs, fresh tears shimmering in the moonlight as they fell from her eyes.
"Why?" she asked him again, more quietly this time, more weakly.
"...I-I don't know," he said at length, the words sounding strange. His voice was hoarse and tremulous as he spoke. "I just... after Suki, and everything else that had happened... I just felt like I couldn't face you guys. I didn't... I wanted to fix my own problems. I didn't want to be a burden on any of you. I was tired of dragging the rest of you down."
"You're my brother," said Katara. "Our friend. You could never be a burden. We'll always be there to help. We'll always be there for you. We've always been there for you."
Sokka grimaced.
"I know," said he. "And that's why... why I couldn't go to any of you. You all had your own things to deal with. You all had so many people who needed you. I couldn't push my problems onto you guys. I couldn't make you drop everything just for me, to comfort me just because I was too weak to get over it on my own. That would have been selfish."
A resounding smack echoed throughout the empty streets. Sokka staggered away from Katara, recoiling as though from a blow. He collapsed backwards onto the ground. An angry red mark was forming on his cheek.
"And running away wasn't?!" she screamed at him, eyes red and puffy. "Do you have any idea how worried we were?! We had no idea where you'd gone! You just disappeared without even saying goodbye! A letter. That was all you left us with. A letter! What, you couldn't even tell us goodbye to our faces? Since when were you such a coward?!"
Sokka looked away from Katara, unable to meet her gaze. This only further galled her.
"Do you have any idea how badly you hurt us?! Everything has been such a mess without you! I couldn't eat for a week after you left. I was so angry! Why couldn't you come to me? Why couldn't you talk to me? Why didn't you trust me?"
Sokka winced, as though she had slapped him again.
"Suki still isn't able to look me in the eye," Katara continued, her words quieter now, softer, less angry and more sad. "Did you know? She blamed herself for your disappearance. And Toph... Toph and I haven't spoken in years. After you left, she just fell apart. She lost so much weight worrying about you that she got sick... she was bedridden for a month...
"And Dad... Dad was a wreck. Bato had to take over as chief because Dad was just in no condition to lead the tribe after you left. They hardly smile at all, these days. And Aang hasn't been the same, either. He misses you just as much, Sokka. He doesn't joke or laugh or play around at all like he used to. Ever since you up and vanished, he just hasn't had the heart... None of us have."
"Katara..." Sokka began, softly, weakly. "I-I never knew... I didn't think..."
"That's just it!" she yelled, her anger surging back up like a plume of fire. "You didn't think! You just ran away like a selfish ass because you were too proud to accept our help! And look at you! Look what at you've done to yourself! How long have you been drinking?!" she exclaimed, gesturing wildly. "And look at you! When was the last time you ate a proper meal, or even slept under an actual roof?"
Sokka did not answer. Both of them knew she would not like the truth, but a lie would not make things any better.
So he said nothing at all.
"No, I can't leave you here," Katara continued firmly, grim resolve evident in the tone of her voice and the set of her jaw. She shook her head and bent over to pick her brother back up (he's too light he shouldn't be so easy for me to carry this isn't right) "You might have abandoned us, Sokka, but I won't do the same to you. I could never do that to you. Not after seeing what you've done to yourself."
She sighed sadly, looking straight into his eyes as she took in his ghastly appearance. "Spirits, Sokka, what were you thinking? Why have done this to yourself?"
Sokka could feel his sister's tears soaking the fabric of his shirt as Katara once more started carrying him down the street. He was silent for a moment, before finally answering.
"It... just hurt... It hurt so much..." he said, slowly at first. He sounded distant, somehow, like he was trying to remove himself from the words coming out of his mouth as he began to ramble half incoherently. "My leg, my heart, I don't know. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was everything. I don't know. I just... I just wanted the pain to go away..." he breathed. "I just wanted to stop feeling... Is that really so wrong?" he whispered hoarsely.
Then he paused, silent for a moment, before speaking again.
"No..." he said slowly, answering his own question. "I-I know it is... I know it wasn't the right way... But I just wanted to be numb. I just wanted to be able to close my eyes and sleep without nightmares."
He sighed.
"Do you know, Katara? I killed. During the war, I mean. I watched men bleed out before me, too many for me to count. I cut them and stabbed them and bashed in their skulls. I had to. I was too weak to do anything else. I had to kill them to protect you guys."
He shuddered, a haunted look in his eyes.
"I can see their faces when I close my eyes," he continued. "I can still hear them screaming and groaning and gurgling as they die. I've seen myself kill them, watched them all die so many times in my dreams," he whispered as he gazed into the distance, perhaps staring at something that only he could see. "Why couldn't I have stronger?" he asked, half to himself, half to Katara, half to no one. "Why couldn't I have been like you or Aang or Toph?" he groaned morosely. "You guys... you made it look so easy, beating people without killing them. But I wasn't strong like you guys. I wasn't able to do that. I had to kill them. I had to kill them just to survive. If I hadn't, I know they would have killed me instead."
He shivered, as though afflicted by a bone-deep chill.
"So why do they continue to haunt me?" he wheezed, looking so wretched and piteous. "The war is over, but I still see their bodies, still hear them scream. And those are just the ones I've killed personally, directly. But the airships, Katara. The airships," he breathed, an almost wild, hunted look in his eyes. "Do you know, Katara? Do you know how many crew members there were on each one?" he asked her, before once again answering his own rhetorical question. "At least fifty," he said. "At least. But most carried as many as a hundred, or even more. And how many of those crew do you think got away alive?" he asked her desperately. "How many people do you suppose survived those crashes? The crashes I caused?"
He shuddered, and his face seemed to grow paler as he nervously ran trembling fingers though lank, dirty hair.
"I saw the wreckage," he breathed, and Katara almost could imagine that she saw the burning, twisted hulks reflected in the depths of her brother's eyes. "I saw the corpses," he continued. "There were hundreds of them, Katara. Maybe even a thousand, or more. So many men and women, all burned and mangled and crushed and..." He gasped, drawing a shuddering, uneasy breath. "I killed them, Katara, all those hundreds of people. How many families, do you suppose, lost their loved ones because of me that day? How many parents were there, do you imagine, who would never get to see their sons or daughters again, all because of me?"
Katara let out breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, staring disbelievingly, uncertainly into her brother's eyes.
"They died because of me," he whispered, and Katara felt her heart break just a little more at the tone in his voice as he said it. "Most of them..." he murmured, "most never even had a chance to survive. Some were trapped for days, maybe weeks, their bodies pinned beneath so many tons of steel. What do you suppose their last thoughts were, Katara, as they laid there waiting for a rescue that would come far too late? What were their final moments like, do you think, as their life slowly slipped away from them, getting weaker and weaker and weaker until it was finally gone?"
Sokka shivered.
"I killed them," he whispered. "I killed them. I can still see their bodies, when I close my eyes. I couldn't sleep. I could hardly eat. I still can't. And... and after what happened with Suki..." he said quietly. "After she... after the two of us... I just-I couldn't bring myself to face you, any of you. Suki had been the only one, I had thought... Out of all of us, she had been the only one..." he whispered. "I had felt like she was the only one who really understood what it was like."
He sighed morosely. "But I was wrong. She didn't," he all but spat, looking down at his hands with disgust. Not disgust with Suki. Disgust with himself. "Do you know, Katara," he said slowly, shakily, "Do you know how she looked at me, Katara, when I told her all of this? When I told her about the nightmares, and the bodies, and the blood that wouldn't come off my hands no matter how hard I scrubbed?
"She was horrified, Katara, apalled. She could barely even look me in the eye after that. She couldn't stand to look at me," he breathed, looking for all the world like a man walking to his execution. "It wasn't even a week after I told Suki that she... that we broke up. She had been a warrior like me, Katara. She had taken lives just as readily, killed her enemies without hesitation. But she looked at me like I was a monster, when I told her about the bodies from the crash, about the nightmares and the flashbacks."
He shook his head, hiccoughing weakly as he peered glazed, dull eyes into his sister's.
"In the end, even Suki didn't understand. And if she didn't, what hope was there that you or Aang or Toph would? Aang couldn't even bring himself to kill Ozai. You spared even Azula. Two of the most horrible, messed up, evil people in the world, and you guys were still able to spare their lives, to show them mercy. But me? I killed hundreds in that battle. Hundreds of young men and women whose only crime had been following orders, doing what their superiors told them to." He shook his head. "So many lives lost, so much blood shed, and all of it on my hands."
For a moment, there was silence between them as they continued slowly down the street. Sokka was hobbling slowly, unsteadily along, leaning most of his weight on his sister. Katara could not help but notice the slight halt in his steps, the way he clearly favored one leg over the other.
It struck her that he still had a limp. His leg was still giving him trouble, even after so many years. And if it still pained him, if it was still difficult for him to use that leg, then she feared all at once that it would never truly recover. Her brother had never been particularly graceful, but this bad leg would follow him for the rest of his life. He was still so young - they both were - and yet he would never to be able to run around or fight like he used to.
It was sobering, and perhaps a fitting metaphor. Just as the war had left its mark in his gait, so too could she now see that it had left scars on his heart, as well. He would never be the same man he once was. The war had taken that away from him.
It had taken that from all of them.
But still, hearing her brother talk like this, Katara could not help the feeling that swelled up inside her. She refused to stand by and let Sokka berate himself like this. He deserved better than that, better than this.
"Sokka..." she said softly, looking her brother straight in the eyes. "It's not your fault. If anyone is to blame, it's Ozai. It was his fault, not yours. You just did what needed to be done. Sokka, if you hadn't been there, how far do you suppose the fleet might have gotten before it was stopped, if it had been stopped at all? How many millions more innocent people might have died if you hadn't been there, if you hadn't been willing to do whatever it took to stop the fleet?"
She shook her head, her cheeks stained with tear tracks.
"I know you must feel guilty, Sokka. I... I can't even begin to imagine what you must have been going through all this time... I feel horrible. I should have noticed. You're my brother," she sobbed, wrapping her arms tightly around him, "I should have been able to tell. I should have known you were suffering. But I didn't. Oh, Spirits, I was so wrapped up in everything with Aang and everyone that I never even realized what you were going through... I... I'm so sorry, Sokka. I failed to be there when you needed me most. I... I feel like such a heel..." she cried.
Sokka grimaced, closing his eyes and weakly clenching his fists.
"No, Katara..." he whispered. "Stop... You don't need to... I'm not worth it. You don't have anything to be sorry for," he told her. "Don't try to tell me that it wasn't my fault. I know it was. They might have been there because of the Fire Lord, but I still killed them. In the end, how am I any different from Ozai? How am I any less responsible for all those lives that were lost?" he rasped, looking so lost and afraid. "I'm a monster, Katara. I'm not like you, or Aang, or the others. I'm not worth crying over. I'm not worth mourning. All those deaths are still on my head. I've killed so many. It will never wash off. I'm a monster, Katara. A monster. A monster."
"Sokka, no..." she said, "No. You're not a monster. A monster wouldn't be haunted by his actions, a monster wouldn't regret all the blood that was spilled. You're a good man, Sokka. A better man than Ozai, by far - a hundred times, no, a thousand times better."
Sokka looked like he was about to protest this, but Katara silenced him with a single glance.
"We miss you, Sokka. We have all missed you so much," she continued. "Please, just... Please come home. I know you must be hurting, but living like this won't fix anything. Wallowing in guilt and drinking yourself half to death won't make anyone happy."
She sighed sadly.
"Please, Sokka. I don't want to see you like this. You're my brother. I love you. I know I used to poke fun, but... but this isn't you. This isn't my brother. Please, Sokka. Please, just give us a chance to help you. None of us want to see you like this. We want to help you. We want to get you through this."
"I... I don't know..." whispered Sokka weakly, his voice rasping harshly, tears shimmering in the corners of his eyes. "I... just want it to stop. I just want the nightmares to stop, the pain to stop. I just want to stop feeling. I just... I just want to sleep," he said, his voice coming out a shaky and weak and tired.
Katara smiled at him sadly, seeing how ghastly and frail her brother looked, leaning against her for support. He looked sickly - hell, he looked almost like he was at death's door. He should not have weighed so little. She should not have been able to support him so easily.
"Don't worry," she told him reassuringly. "We'll get through this together. All of us will - Aang, Toph, Zuko, everyone. We'll help you get better. We'll do whatever it takes, Sokka. You won't have to deal with these things alone. You have us. We love you, Sokka."
He quirked an eyebrow shakily. "Even Zuko?" he asked, and it filled Katara's heart with a mixture of sadness and joy to hear a trace of the old humor in her brother's voice and see the ghost of a smile on his face.
"Especially Zuko," she told him with a weak sort of laugh. And yet the laugh was real, and she felt better than she had in years.
She knew it would be a long road to recovery, and she understood that things would never be able to go back to the way they had been. It would be a hard, painful journey for all of them, and she knew that Sokka would need their help every inch of the way, whether he admitted it or not. But maybe one day she would truly have her big brother back.
That was something she could hope for. Something she could work towards.
She would help him. She would support him. She would be there for him. They all would. Her, Dad, Bato, Gran-Gran, Aang, Toph, Suki, Ty Lee, Zuko, Mai, Iroh... even Appa and Momo.
They would all be there for Sokka. Katara knew that they would.
Smiling sadly - and yet more genuinely than she had in a long while - Katara glanced up at the waxing moon, under whose light she had, by chance, met her brother again for the first time in three long years.
She glanced sidelong at Sokka, and she saw that in the moonlight he looked almost like the young man he had once been.
"Yue looks especially beautiful tonight," she breathed softly, turning her gaze back to stare up at the celestial body. remembering her brother's first love.
Sokka mirrored her smile, and followed her line of sight.
"Yeah..." he said, his voice slightly cracking, "She really does."
A/N: Because I am the sort of horrible person who just loves to see his favorite characters suffer. :D
In all seriousness, though, I had been seriously hankering for some good, gen Sokka angst after finishing chapter 5 of Unexpected Aftermath, but I had not found nearly enough to satisfy my cravings. So I ended up producing this.
And although this fic - like so many - kinda got away from me as I wrote, I still really like how it turned out. The focus really changed and evolved as I wrote, but I still think we got to some real pathos from Sokka and Katara. And of course the ending is kinda optimistic - in spite of everything else, even when I write angst I rarely do stories with truly, genuinely depressing endings - out of 71 (counting this) fanfics that I have written, And None Shall Mourn Thee is probably the only one with a one hundred percent genuinely sad ending.
Also, while this is a oneshot and for all intents and purposes complete and self-contained, if anyone wants to do a sequel or continuation of their own, they are more than welcome to do so - just let me know if you do, and tell me where I can find it! ;D
But, with that said:
Edited 7-21-13 - fixed a lot of little errors, and fleshed out some scenes a bit more.
TTFN and R&R!